I want to see what people on Lemmy are reading. Can be unique in terms of lore, concept or even the cover. Mine are invisible monsters, battle royale and horrorstor. What about yours?
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Martian Time-Slip by Philip K Dick - PKD is always pretty weird, but I found this one especially so. Time travel experiments by unlikable characters that involves abusing schizophrenic and autistic children.
Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie - First of the Imperial Radch series. Told from the perspective of an intelligence that’s truly different than ours (even though it is ostensibly human). It made a lot of waves for having genderless characters, but that only scratches the surface of how strangely the narrator relates to the humans they’re dealing with.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer - First of the Southern Reach series. A group of 4 unnamed individuals go to investigate a reality distorting phenomenon and reality gets heavily distorted. This one declares right up front that it’s going to get strange and does exactly that.
- 4 days
Did you read all books from the Annihilation series? I think i should give Annihilation another try.
I have read the original trilogy. They’re very different from Annihilation and it can be a little jarring. I really enjoyed them, and would easily recommend the whole series.
I feel like I need to reread the trilogy to try the fourth book.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, by Oliver Sacks
- 7 days
Probably The Silmarillion. It reads like a fucking poem that goes on for hundreds of pages.
- 7 days
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.
It’s been a good many years since I had my nose in my copy, but I am glad I was able to read it at a time of my life that I could attain some appreciation and understanding of it. Right now, I don’t think I could focus my attention long enough to get back into it.
I haven’t sought out Hofstadter’s other works, but if I could get that mindset back, I’d definitely consider it. I Am a Strange Loop is on my want-to-read list.
And if the surname seems familiar, a character in a popular TV show was given his surname on purpose by the writers.
- vrek@programming.devEnglish7 days
I like “life at reset” series. Basically guy is playing mmo and on top of leader boards. He gets betrayed by his “friend” ends up as a goblin and can’t log out. Through the books explores concepts like rights of a true Ai, dealing with emotions of betrayal, advancements in technology, sacrifice for family, purpose of your life and more. It’s 6 books so not a quick read but interesting and thought provoking.
- vrek@programming.devEnglish7 days
To give you a slight idea of what you’re getting into the “Ai agents” are always “alive”, when not controlling a character in game they are stuck in a pool with the other unused Ai agents, when they are in use they must act within how the character they are controlling would act. If they are an early enemy they must make mistakes and will likely “die”. That’s the point of early bosses, give the player a sense of power but if the Ai is conscience and sentient is it morally acceptable to kill them repeatedly? The player may grind an area repeatedly for either experience or specific loot. If the loot has a 2% drop rate, is it morally right to repeatedly run that dungeon for days/weeks killing that Ai over and over looking for that drop? What about the other Ais watching you repeatedly kill their friend? They have thoughts and feelings but their only future is to repeatedly be shoved into the embodiment of some character and likely suffer from injuries and likely death only to be returned to their pool to observe their friends suffering the same way untill they are forced to repeat the experience.
I answer with this a lot on Lemmy but House of Leaves. That fucking book. Everyone should read it once. If you read it multiple times you are a crazy person, and if you are not: trying to understand it will MAKE you a crazy person.
- toynbee@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
I learned of this book at a time during which I was unable to appreciate it. I’m currently tentatively unpacking my books and am hoping to find it, but also am kind of nervous to based on its reputation.
- 8 days
Get yourself a bit of Christopher Moore or some Neal Stephenson.
Tim Dorsey was great up until the end although there was a lot of same-ness about much of his work.
Work your way through Cory Doctrow’s catalog of unique fiction.
I love almost everything by Dean Koontz - he is a magical phrase turner.
You can always sell me on a Kaiju novel.
8 daysAnathem by Stephenson fits this bill. Cold open to a universe with no exposition and no viewpoint character that gets things explained to them. It’s pretty fucked up until you begin to piece together the clues and build the world logic for yourself.
The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson (not to be confused with that other Robert Wilson) deserves an honorable mention. The story is driven by the appearance of massive monument commemorating a military victory 20 years in the future. As the story progresses more of these future monuments appear as the story drives towards the conditions that will initiate the war.
- dgdft@lemmy.worldEnglish8 days
These are almost cheating, but I’ll go with Gravity’s Rainbow followed by Blood Meridian.
- 7 days
Oh, you’re into that genre?
-American Psycho (gotta love that urinal cake that Patrick dipped in Godiva chocolate and wrapped it as a present for Evelyn.)
-WOOM (that rug scene made my chest tight)
-Dead Inside (just…wow. Rip Abigail Turpentine)
-Exquisite corpse
-tender is the flesh
- 4 days
Tender is the flesh is on my tbr for a while and thank you so much for those recommendations.
